The Steward
Legacy, values and the long now, leadership as care and continuity.
Jeff Immelt reads as The Steward because his signature act at General Electric was absorbing institutional fear rather than broadcasting vision. His dual-truth framework, holding worst-case realism alongside forward hope at once, functioned as deliberate course-correction under sustained uncertainty.
“Yes, Barry. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. My dad was a career kind of manufacturing guy in our aviation business. So I kind of grew up in the shadow of the company, if you will. One away to school and went to business school and I graduated in 1982.”
“Sure. And again, that's what I try to do is just tell this story. In other words, what I wanted to do is just start on day one and end the day I walked out the door and talk about my colleagues, the decisions we made, and let people just have a full set of facts.”
“Yeah, I had two mentors. The first one was the leader of the plastics business when I was a young manager. It was a gentleman named Glenn Heiner. And he was, you know, what it showed me, what Glenn showed me was that a leader could be respectful and tough at the same time. And it was good to see in him.”
“Yes, look I mean, I think what I wanted to do again in the book was to provide context. So over sixteen years, we've generated more earnings and cash flow than the previous one hundred ten years combined. We were leaders in the industries we were in. We developed good team.”
Masters in Business: “Jeff Immelt on Crisis Management and Leadership (Podcast)”
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